Review of Into the Blue by Emma Brodie

The promising premise (normal-everyday romance with a show-business background) unfortunately didn't translate to a story that worked for me; the execution of this romance felt melodramatic, cyclical, and unsatisfying, with details that didn't ring true for me as a reader.

AJ is a high schooler in 2000, dreaming of writing for Saturday Night Live, but working at her local video rental store and writing fan fiction with an audience of a few dozen.

Then Noah walks in as a new hire; he's a few years older--her brother's age--and infamous for once burned down a local building (the details are sketchy). For some reason he's returned home and is living with his reclusive, famous actress of an aunt, and AJ is immediately tongue-tied. She's writing fan fiction about his aunt's former television show, after all.

One thing leads to another, and the two become involved in daily acting lessons with Noah's quirky aunt. Muuuuuuch later they find themselves acting opposite each other in a hit show--we see a glimpse of this early in the book.

I loved much of the premise of this novel. But the execution didn't land for me. The tone felt melodramatic, particularly regarding the relationship at the story's heart.

The structure of the book necessitates jumping around in time, feeding the reader a highly charged scene up front, then diving back to the beginning of AJ's and Noah's friendship and tracking forward toward the situation we first entered. The leaps left me feeling unmoored and less emotionally invested than I might have been.

Note that AJ is 17 and he is 21 when they first connect; I'm not sure why Brodie wouldn't simply make AJ's age 18 to avoid legal and moral issures around this age differential.

Noah abruptly exits AJ's life at one point, and we later find out that he was coping with something extraordinarily painful and that he was trying to prevent AJ from experiencing and suffering because of it. This is potentially powerful and heartbreaking. But I didn't feel expected emotions around this because of many of the issues I mention here.

Noah and AJ's deep mind connection felt overstated and unrealistic within the novel; it's a telepathy that felt unnecessary and, for me within this context, offputtingly unrealistic.

More importantly, Noah and AJ feel consistently stunted, trapped in immature patterns without showing any growth. Their bond feels less passionate and irresistible than simply destructive to their potential emotional evolution and possible maturity in a way that didn't feel intentional. AJ feels unworthy of famous Noah's attention; Noah closes himself off emotionally to "save" AJ. They cycle through the same patterns over and over again in the book, seemingly without learning anything (aside from honing their sex skillz!); this was somewhat frustrating and certainly unsatisfying to me as a reader.

The sex scenes were extremely specific, at times pages long, and at certain points the sexual elements so strange as to make me cringe and laugh nervously. One striking example: Late in the book AJ reveals that--note, this was when she was 17 and he was 21--she orgasmed in her pants when she and Noah were simply dancing. He's always been irresistible to her, and at that point in the book readers are well aware, so sharing this previously unknown and oddly specific moment felt unnecessary to me and took me out of the moment.

The science fiction show within the book seemed like it would be a slam-dunk element for me, but it didn't feel real; it lasted for longer than I anticipated, yet I couldn't get my head around it visually or plotwise. Improv seems particularly tricky to convey on the page, and that also felt disjointed to me here.

I read this title for one of my book clubs.

Other Books to Check Out

Emma Brodie is an executive editor at Clarkson Potter and is also the author of Songs in Ursa Major.

You might be interested in the titles on my list of Six Romantic Novels Set in the World of TV and Movies.